This went around the book blogs a little while ago, but I haven’t mentioned it till now because I’m unbelievably lazy. It’s a day-by-day post of Jonathan Swift’s letters back to his friend-partner-confidante-complicated-something in Dublin, written as he’s politicking and meeting people and watching the world in London.

In paper form, the Journal is a bit of a block on the page; it’s kind of dense and unfriendly, full of in-jokes and private language games and names you need to flip to the footnotes to recognise. Once you’re through that, though, it’s tremendous: Swift being funny, sharp, silly, playful, touching – it’s just a really great private book. Swift tends to mean one thing (‘coruscating satire’ & don’t get me started on ‘coruscating”s sliding meaning) to a lot of readers. That obscures a little how much range he has: what a keen observer he is, how well he’s listening to speech and watching the town; how he can be casually and harmlessly funny, just pointlessly entertaining; how he’s firing from an over-inventive imagination that’s racing ahead of itself all the time; and just what a neat stylist he is, whether writing plainly or working up the rhetoric.

There’s never been another like him; the old saeva indignatio doesn’t begin to cover it.

I think it’s a fine service to the world this being up: Paddy (see below for full disclosure!!) was spot on in realising that the Web would serve this well; that the barriers to enjoying it would be greatly reduced with links and daily posting. It’s inspired, of course, by Phil Gyford’s Pepys’ Diary; and I think it would be great to see more things like this. A Wood! Evelyn!

That full disclosure!!: I did the back-end & design work on the site, and the mastermind is a good friend of mine. The hard & impressive work is his; I’m responsible for the things that don’t quite work. Send complaints this way.